Child Development

Before giving your kid that dose of antibiotics or cold medicine, make sure you read up on these common medicine mistakes. Cough, cold and flu season is in full swing—it’s that time of year when medication errors are most likely to occur. Doling out liquid medication is especially tricky. In fact, researchers …

Melissa Stenhouse knows how play can positively impact a kid. She’s seen it time and again in her role as program coordinator at Hamilton-based Today’s Family Early Learning and Child Care, a non-profit that offers child care and parental-support classes. But her favourite success story is about a girl named Zoey* …

Weekday mornings are primed for failure, just by their very nature: There are countless to-dos but not a lot of time to do them. Add little people to the mix, and it’s no wonder the experience can leave you weary. We can’t promise there won’t be tantrums (from kids or parents), …

Two-year-olds are amazing. They are emotional. They are unpredictable. They have less life experience than some of the condiments in my refrigerator—and that perspective is easy to lose when they’re on the floor in a screaming heap.  The following is an excerpt from a new book by the Busy Toddler blogger, former …

Rhonda Michels, a mom in Canmore, Alta., was watching her two kids play in the backyard on a spring afternoon when her daughter Lexi, 3, started pulling leaves off the small birch saplings. “I told her no, and she just went and did it again,” Michels says. “She just kept …

Some toddlers resist their high chair and protest being at the table. How should you react? It happened with both our kids: At around 12 months, until about 19 months, they just wouldn’t stay at the dinner table. Sometimes they yanked at the straps and squirmed out of their high …

Children don’t think they like vegetables. But a few smart strategies can turn young vegetable skeptics into eager eaters. When my daughter, Jane, was 18 months old or so, our family got into the habit of “toasting” with vegetables—raising, say, a tender roasted carrot slice to the middle of the …

Dorothy Robson and Sean Smith first noticed their three-year-old son, Sebastian, was hitting other kids when he was a year and a half. “At first, we would redirect him and say, ‘You can’t hit. This is a gentle touch,’” says Robson. “But as he gets older, we talk to him …

Suspicious of that sniffly nose? Curious about that cough? Read on to decode some common allergic cues Wondering if your kid has allergies? Here are the common signs of allergies in kids. History of allergy in the family What it means: Along with eye colour and personality quirks, parents can …

Risky playground antics? Lousy sleeper? With high-spirited kids, “it’s as though their brain is stuck on ‘Go!'” My first son wasn’t much older than two when I figured it out: he’s what they call “high-spirited.” A high-spirited child is just a little… extra, in almost all the ways they can …